Second City Firsts and Rainbow City to be digitised

copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

It was announced last week that thousands of British television programmes are to be digitised in order to preserve them. The BFI is investing £13.5 million pounds worth of Lottery funding to carry out the project. Programmes from the 1970s and 1980s are said to be particularly at risk.

A number of Pebble Mill and pre-Pebble Mill dramas have been identified as part of the digitisation, these include, Second City Firsts (1973-8), and Rainbow City (1967). These are considered particularly significant because they include the early work of black and Asian writers.

The digitisation is being prioritised because of the shortage of early video equipment in sound working order, and the growing shortage of technical operators for such equipment.

It’s great to hear that some of the lesser known dramas to be made in Gosta Green and Pebble Mill are now being recognised as culturally important.

 

Errol John and Gemma Jones in Rainbow City. Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

Errol John and Gemma Jones in Rainbow City. Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

 

 

 

 

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Barry Hanson – Aug 1943-June 2016

Peter Sasdy & Barry Hanson on Witchcraft. Photo by Willoughby Gulachsen, no reproduction without permission

Peter Sasdy & Barry Hanson on Witchcraft. Photo by Willoughby Gullachsen, no reproduction without permission

Gavin Davies, Barry Hanson, Alan Dosser, Tom Beech, perhaps on Muscle Market. Photo by Willoughby Gulachsen, no reproduction without permission

Gavin Davies, Barry Hanson, Alan Dosser, Tom Beech, probably on Broke. Photo by Willoughby Gulachsen, no reproduction without permission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barry Hanson sadly died in June 2016. Here is his obituary in The Guardian, written by Christopher Hampton and Stephen Frears:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/aug/14/barry-hanson-obituary

Barry Hanson, who has died aged 72, moved through several branches of his profession before finding his true vocation as a television producer. At Pebble Mill, the BBC’s broadcasting centre in Birmingham, under David Rose, he produced a series of plays known as Second City Firsts (1973-74). Next, for ITV, came a film that was to come fourth in the BFI’s list, made in 2000, of the 100 best TV shows of the century: The Naked Civil Servant (1975), based by Philip Mackie on Quentin Crisp’s memoir about his battles for sexual freedom, directed by Jack Gold and starring John Hurt. This won a Bafta award for Hurt, and the Prix Italia. Almost immediately it established itself as one of the most memorable and groundbreaking programmes of its era.

After several more hard-hitting plays and series for TV came Barry’s most celebrated project. The Long Good Friday (1980) was written by Barrie Keeffe for Thames Television, where Barry had arrived to work with Verity Lambert. When the company’s nerve failed in the face of the script’s uncompromising power, Barry had it bought back from them and decided to launch it as a film for the cinema.

Financed by Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment, it was directed by John Mackenzie. However, its central premise, that the carving-up of London’s Docklands between Bob Hoskins’s London mobster and the New York mafia is disrupted by the IRA’s attempt to muscle in on the action, so alarmed decision-makers that it was decided to remove this crucial element and bury the film in some ITV graveyard shift.

Barry’s response was, with Mackenzie, to hijack the negative and head for Los Angeles. There, after much intricate manoeuvring, a sale was eventually arranged to George Harrison’s Handmade Films: and so emerged what, as last year’s re-release reminded us, is almost certainly the finest British gangster film since Brighton Rock.

I first knew him as a member of the small – but tolerated – heterosexual minority when I arrived to work at the Royal Court theatre, London, in 1968. He had stepped sideways from the publicity department to become an assistant director to Peter Gill in his DH Lawrence productions and to Robert Kidd on my play Total Eclipse. He then progressed to directing Sunday-night productions without decor (as they were known) and a collective satirical piece in the Theatre Upstairs called The Enoch Show, about the wave of racism stirred up by the speeches of the Conservative MP Enoch Powell.

His Yorkshire roots always remained of great importance to him and he shared with many of his friends from the area – the playwrights Mercer and David Halliwell and the actor Victor Henry – a keen nose for metropolitan bullshit and a healthy mistrust of authority. These qualities stood him in particularly good stead when it came to the troubled realisation of The Long Good Friday.

The following year, 1969, he left for Hull to run the first arts centre in Britain, where he worked closely with Alan Plater and presented Richard III with Hoskins, among many other plays.

From the Royal Court, Barry brought with him an instinctive sense of commitment to the directors he worked with – including Stephen Frears, Michael Apted and Ken Russell – and, even more strongly, to the writers: John Osborne, David Mercer, Howard Brenton, David Rudkin, Trevor Preston and Stephen Poliakoff. In disputes with management, he invariably took the side of the artist, but the colder winds that began to blow in the 1980s, as television was prised from the fingers of the creators and handed over to ever thicker layers of administrators, created a climate that no longer suited his buccaneering temperament.

There was other work – The Wine Programme on Channel 4 (1982), the first-ever series on the subject, Russell’s Lady Chatterley series and A Year in Provence (both 1993) – which engaged him and kept him moving. But the glory days were over and the increasingly debilitating effects of his rheumatoid arthritis made matters considerably worse. He continued in TV till 1995, and returned to film production for a one-off, Creep (2004), a horror story set under the streets of London, with the disused Aldwych tube station among its locations.

Barry was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, to Harry Hanson, a compost salesman, and his wife, Irene (nee Raistrick), a burler and mender, removing and remedying imperfections in cloth at the local wool mill. Educated at Bellevue grammar school in the city, he began, along with his fellow pupil the future actor Edward Peel, to take an interest in theatre there, and went on to read English at Newcastle University. A year’s teaching at Bradford grammar school made it clear to him that his fate lay elsewhere, and he took a job in publicity at Harrogate theatre, from which he moved on to the Royal Court.
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His Yorkshire roots always remained of great importance to him and he shared with many of his friends from the area – the playwrights Mercer and David Halliwell and the actor Victor Henry – a keen nose for metropolitan bullshit and a healthy mistrust of authority. These qualities stood him in particularly good stead when it came to the troubled realisation of The Long Good Friday.

In 1969 Barry met Susanna Capon – I believe I introduced them. They married in 1971 and their daughter, Katy, was born in 1978. For many years, they kept a convivial house in Hammersmith, west London, entertaining a wide range of friends.

An amicable divorce in 2012 did not prevent Susanna and Katy from supporting Barry through his long final illness, in Pembrokeshire, where they had moved to be close to Katy’s solicitor practice and their grandson and granddaughter.
Christopher Hampton

Stephen Frears writes: Barry Hanson was a terrific fellow – he came from the Royal Court where the writing was new, lively and serious and continued to put writing in the foreground when he went on to work in television. I made four films with him, all provocative and full of vitality, all about the new Britain that had emerged after the war, all serious but drenched in popular culture.

We made them very quickly with the best of young British actors (Richard Beckinsale was in two of them) and the best of young British technicians. Barry was always on the side of good work: he could make your head spin with excitement.

• Barry Anthony Hanson, film and TV producer, born 10 August 1943; died 20 June 2016

The following message was posted on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Lynne Cullimore: ‘Sad to hear this. I did not know him but used to work on the publicity for Second City Firsts, so of course came across him. Its always sad when you hear of a fellow “Pebble Miller” not being around anymore.’

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Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration

IMG_1374 IMG_1378 IMG_1379

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some grabs from Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration, a Second City First transmitted in April 1976. It is a very strange and disturbing play by Ian McEwan, about the oppressive relationships that both Jack Flea’s mother and partner, have with him. It was shown in April 2016 at the mac, as part of the Flatpack Film Festival.

Here is the entry from the Radio Times, courtesy of the BBC Genome project, http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/689430d99ef64c58a1b6c3c947b854fc 

“A series of new plays from Birmingham
Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration by IAN MCEWAN
Jack Flea finds himself living with a woman nearly twice his age, who decides to make him her fantasy child. It is a role our young hero cannot resist.
Script editor PEDR JAMES
Designer MALCOLM GOULDING. Producer TARA PREM. Director MIKE NEWELL

Cast:

Ruth: Sara Kestelman, David: David Wilkinson, Mrs Lee: Eileen McCallum, Mr Lee: Ivor Roberts”

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Flatpack Film Festival – Second City Firsts

A Touch of Eastern Promise

A Touch of Eastern Promise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Flatpack Film Festival are going to be screening six 30 minute dramas made at Pebble Mill by the English Regions Drama Department, in April 2016 at the Midlands Arts Centre, Edgbaston:

“SECOND CITY FIRSTS

During the 1970s, a key strength of the drama department at BBC Pebble Mill was its ability to unearth new talent; not just through flagships like Play For Today, but also the entry-point offered by the likes of Second City Firsts. Running from 1973 for ten series, this half-hour slot took a chance on a spectacular range of ‘regional talent’ including Willy Russell, Julie Walters, David Rudkin, Brian Glover and many others. Just as importantly, it offered a diversity of representation that often compares favourably with today’s TV drama.

 

Volume One:

A Touch of Eastern Promise; Girl; Early to Bed

A Touch of Eastern Promise (1973), is not officially a Second City First, though it emerged from a very similar slot. Written by Tara Prem, it’s the tale of a daydreaming shop-boy who has the opportunity to meet his favourite star. Partly shot in Balsall Heath, all the cinema scenes were captured at the now-demolished Imperial on Moseley Road. To follow, an Alison Steadman double-bill: studio-shot military drama Girl (1974), which features the first lesbian kiss seen on British TV; and then Early to Bed (1975), with Steadman smouldering on location in a depressed mill town. This claustrophobic tale of infidelity was the first television script by Alan Bleasdale, who later went on to Boys From the Blackstuff and GBH.

 

Volume Two:

The Permissive Society; Club Havana; Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration

It was at the Midlands Arts Centre where Mike Leigh first embarked on his unique approach to devising scripts, and Pebble Mill which commissioned much of his early TV work. Made a year before camping comedy Nuts in May, The Permissive Society (1975) is an overlooked gem. Also confined to a single set, Club Havana (1975) is a tense portrait of a Handsworth speakeasy by playwright Barry Reckord, featuring Don Warrington as the landlady’s son newly arrived from Jamaica and an incredibly young Julie Walters as the barmaid. We conclude with Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration (1976), a psychosexual nightmare from the pen of Ian McEwan which is very much in keeping with his short stories of the time.”

 

 

Remembering Pebble Mill – David Norris

Remembering Pebble Mill PP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

This article, by David Norris, about Pebble Mill appeared in the BBC retirees’ magazine, Prospero, recently.

Thanks to Peter Poole for sharing this article.

The following comment was left on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:

Keith Brook: ‘Ah, Brothers.

My ‘roll your own’ cigarettes, in brown Rizla papers, featured heavily in the series when Hilary Tindall smoked them in a sophisticated way.
I had to make them fatter to look like imported ciggies. Fair play to the girl, she wasn’t a smoker, but she inhaled my super strong, no filter tip, Old Holborn masterpieces.

The whole series cost me a fortune!!’

Mainly because of the retakes cause by Paddy O’Connell, which required another hastily make one.